Thirteen of them had already perished when Pelops arrived on the scene. The king had an incestuous passion for his daughter, according to some, and let it be known that, while anyone was free to carry her off, he would pursue and slay the hapless suitor if he could. When he grew up, he began to court Hippodameia, the daughter of Oenomaos of Pisa. Through him, Pelops had a team of the finest horses and had acquired great skill as a driver.
His lover was the god Poseidon who was associated with horses as well as the sea. Like most Greek heroes, he came from a dysfunctional family- his father, Tantalus, once cooked him up and served him to the gods to see if they could tell the difference between human and animal flesh (they could). However, most people believed that they were begun by the mythological hero Pelops after whom the Peloponnese (“Pelop's island”) was named.
According to one version the games commemorated a footrace held by the Idaean Herakles and his brothers with a branch cut from a grove wild olive trees at the site. This may explain the fact that there are two different foundation legends. In historical times, control over the games was disputed between the town of Elis and the town(?) of Pisa. The Greeks had only been literate since the eighth century BC, so the names of earlier winners may well have been forgotten. The traditional date for the first Olympic Games is 776 BC, calculated by the ancient Greeks themselves by using a list of winners, but there was almost certainly activity at the site of Olympia before that.
0 kommentar(er)
